Hip and Knee Pain Relief
Don’t Let Your Hip and Knee Pains Get You Down Any Longer!
Your hips and knees are the largest joints in your body, connecting a large number of muscles, bones, and ligaments. That means that much of the daily weight-bearing stress that your body takes can ultimately impact your hips and knees. When these crucial joints begin to show strain, it can become difficult to move much at all — at least without pain. Often, physical therapy can be the key to avoiding surgery or prescription medication altogether or rebounding quickly from those less conservative treatments. Our innovative care strategies at MTI Physical Therapy will help you find quick relief. Let’s get rid of your hip and knee pain today!
How can I decrease hip pain?
Worn joints and pinched nerves are the most common culprits for hip pain. Aging and overuse often cause osteoarthritis, but this painful joint disease can also stem from old injuries. Repetitive motion sometimes leads to hip bursitis, in which fluid-filled sacs around your hips become inflamed. What’s another possible reason for your hip pain? Various nerves running to and from your hips can also become pinched, due to anything from pregnancy to poor posture.
Our physical therapists will give you a full evaluation, assessing your range of motion, level of hip pain, and whether the discomfort also radiates into your buttocks, thighs and groin. Based on this evaluation and existing medical tests, our Physical Therapists will work on flexibility and strength exercises, as well as give you movement strategies to manage the pain.
What can I do about knee pain?
Some of the same causes of hip pain can also affect knees, including arthritis and bursitis. In addition, sports injuries such as tearing your anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) can lead to severe knee pain, as can suddenly twisting your knee and tearing your meniscus. “Loose body” is another knee pain cause; this involves bone or cartilage coming loose and getting in the way of joint movement. Finally, it’s not uncommon for a hip or foot problem to throw your knees out of alignment.
Our highly trained team of licensed physical therapists will evaluate your knee issues, including the location and level of pain and how far you can bend and move your knees and legs in various positions. They will then create a customized physical therapy treatment plan, which will likely consist of strength-building movements, as well as stretches and other flexibility-enhancing techniques with the ultimate goal decreasing your knee pain .
How can physical therapy help my hip/knee pain?
Physical therapy is a natural, easy, and comfortable way to find relief for hip and knee pain, without the need for harmful drugs or invasive surgery. Physical therapy treatment for the hip and knee should always be pain-free. Our passive and active treatments can effectively get you moving again without having to cause additional pain. Our physical therapists are trained in Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy techniques and will OMPT perform soft tissue work and joint mobilization to reduce pain, reduce muscle spasm and increase range of motion.
Therapeutic exercise can be used to specifically train your tendons, muscles or joints to improve tissue repair. Therapeutic exercise can also be dosed specifically to reduce pain, increase local circulation, reduce inflammation and bring needed oxygen and energy into healing muscles. Your physical therapist will assess specific movements to create a therapeutic exercise plan designed to improve your coordination, balance and endurance and will allow for proper alignment of your entire leg, avoiding further tissue irritation or pain. Once we have you moving correctly, it is time to build endurance and strength. This part of the treatment plan can be designed and dosed to progress in your physical therapy clinic, as well as transition to your home. Often healing tissues require continued therapeutic exercise long after they are pain-free, to make them even stronger than they were prior to injury.
A combination of soft tissue work, joint mobilization, therapeutic exercise, patient education and home exercise is the recipe for returning to a pain free and active lifestyle. The physical therapy treatments at MTI Physical Therapy can help to greatly reduce your hip and knee pain. In many cases, your physical therapist can even relieve your pain altogether, sparing you the need for potentially harmful medication or surgical correction.
How did my hip or knee pain develop?
Pain felt in the hips and/or knees may originate in the joints themselves, but it may also be a result of an underlying condition in another part of your body. For example, your hips and knees are part of the same kinetic chain, meaning they make up a combination of weight-bearing joints that must function together in harmony in order for your body and posture to function properly. Therefore, a problem with your knee joint may transmit abnormal forces to your hips, and vice versa. If one part of the kinetic chain is out of balance, stress and deterioration may be placed on another.
Your hip is a ball-and-socket joint that works to support the weight of your upper body, relying on multiple muscles and tissues to keep it mobile and stable so it can function properly. Your knee is a hinge joint, confined to forward-and-backward motions. Individually, your knees support more weight than your hips, 6 times your body weight when doing a squat. Proper movement of both your hips and knees allows for complicated motions giving you the ability to stand, walk, run, and dance without falling over.
Hip and knee pains can be experienced together or separately, but it is important to note that as the old saying goes, your knee bone is connected to your hip bone, therefore what happens with one, affects the other.
Find relief today!
When you’re ready to begin working on methods for getting rid of your knee and/or hip pain, contact us or request an appointment today at our Bellevue, Edmonds, Magnolia, Fremont, First Hill, WA clinic. Our dedicated team of physical therapists will evaluate your condition and suggest a course of treatment.
It is time to take a stand against your hip and knee pain – get started on the path toward long-lasting pain relief today! Your hips and knees will be glad you did!